Friday, September 25, 2009

50/50/50 Exhibit Opens

Emerge digital collage Bill Evertson

The Eclipse Gallery 50/50/50 exhibition opens Saturday 26th. The exhibit's theme features fifty artists from fifty states working in fifty different mediums. The show highlights the moving and often hard to define differences and intersections of fine art, craft and indie design.

50/50/50 Exhibition Opening Announcement

The show is curated by Sarah Elizabeth Condon who states, "I am interested in the intersection between art, craft and design. This exhibition will not only highlight the importance of all art disciplines but will also stress the importance of all working artists regardless of their location."

My work for this exhibit is a digital collage. "Emerge" was created both on paper and in Photoshop. I combined a series of photographic, scanned and drawn works to produce the piece. A deep sea divers suit I photographed at a maritime museum in Kingston, Ontario, sparked the original idea. I worked with a few other photographs of water and sky to obtain a setting for the divers encounter with the lotus. This is one of my occasional forays into Buddhist inspired art. My friend Ria commented, "love how the lotus flower (?) is reflecting in the man's (woman's ?) visor-wait maybe that's even the other way around,...mmm...from a Buddhist standpoint that 'll get me going on interpreting...;) Emerge...excellent title!"

I was pleased to learn that two artists who's work I follow via their blogs are exhibiting in this show. Jennifer Zoellner, representing Flordia and Corrine Bayraktaroglu from Ohio.

Rag Dolls Mixed media by Jennifer Zoellner

Jennifer Zoellner, who I recently met at the A Book About Death opening in NYC, curated the Chromatophore exhibition of mail art I submitted a piece to. Jennifer's unique rag doll creations for 50/50/50 seem to go beyond simple toys/keepsakes due to their idiosyncratic juxtapositions of textures, fabric and facial expressions. I'm a bit reminded of ritual objects from natural history museums in the way they address a particular culture. In this case our fascination with a folk art icon seen through a pop art lens. (Jennifer - feel free to correct my impressions)

The Prick Who Came to Dinner Embroidery by Corrine Bayraktaroglu

Corrine Bayraktaroglu, self described on her blog as a Jafa (just another #%!@&*% artist), works in a variety of media including embroidery, painting, knit graffiti and mixed media. Corrine's most recent work is embroidery based. Her piece for this show "The Prick Who Came to Dinner" is Corrine's commentary in thread on a rather rude dinner guest. She has a way with words and there is more to the story. Lately her blog has shared several embroidery translations from her sketchbooks. (the sketchbooks being works of art in their own right)

Part of the Eclipse Gallery's vision is to provide artists working out of the mainstream art hubs a venue for exhibition. One of the ways artists and curators like Sarah Elizabeth are able to connect is because of social networking via blogs and Facebook. Sarah's ability to seek out and curate for Eclipse exhibits via the social media outlets is a continuation of the historically recent advent of alternative artist spaces. Many artists (for a variety of reasons) are not exhibiting in the larger art markets, yet their styles of work lends itself to the more experimental nature of those spaces. Congratulations to Sarah for her hard work launching her gallery and for the courage to take chances on artists working in often hard to define and experimental modes.

Best wishes for the opening of 50/50/50 at the Eclipse Gallery. Reception, September 26 at the gallery located in Algoma, WI and running through Dec. 31st.

MoMA has obtained A Book About Death

In other news: I learned that MoMA has obtained a complete set of the A Book About Death pages. I am completely amazed that somewhere in the depths of that giant establishment of the art world there is room for such an egalitarian project that sprang and grew from the world of artists networking artists. Again, thanks to Matthew Rose for his organization and to Deven Marriner for compiling the pages for MoMA. What would Ray Johnson make of this development? Further reincarnations of the project are already springing up. Bookmark http://abookaboutdeatharchive.blogspot.com for further developments.